Goodbye Transom!

Well I pulled the top section of fibreglass off and there was a small amount of rot. So I pulled back a bit more and found a little more rot. So I pulled off a little more. The wood was quite wet and I had my suspicions, so I bit the bullet and ripped it all off. Sure enough, there was a couple of good rot patches in the bottom corners.

Well, not what I had hoped to see, but at the end of the day, the boat needs to be safe for my family and I to use. So it's time to get rid of the transom. The whole outer sheet of ply had been held on with brass screws every 3 inches or so, probably more than half were rotted and wouldn't come out, fortunately there wasn't a whole lot of holding power in the rotted wood.

Here is what it looked like once I got the plywood off, exposing the original transom:

And a close up of the centre were you can see the hole made through the transom for the inboard engine.
As you can see once the ply was removed, the transom is in pretty bad shape - not what you'd want to trust your life to. It was surprising to see all the holes drilled through the transom over the years:

And now, for the final step.....Goodbye Transom!

Tearing apart a transom

After getting the transom well out of the way I had much better access to see how bad the rot was. It actually looks like the transom may not need full replacement, it seems that in the past there has been a sheet of plywood added to each side of the transom, with a hardwood centre. The plywood is rotten, but at this stage the hardwood core of the transom looks like it might be ok.

I cut the fibreglass through at each topside corner of the transom, so I could remove the "top" of the transom and check the core. The rot seems limited to the plywood sheeting, it doesn't extend around the corners to the boat sides, though I will need to pull apart a bit further to confirm this.

Next step will be to cut some of the fibreglass off the back of the transom, and see how much can be saved.

Transom Well

Ok, so the transom tear down has begun, the first step was to take out the outboard well, which was an add-on made out of low quality ply that had been fibreglassed over. Therre was an angle iron bar that ran through it and was bolted onto the transom. I undid the rusted nuts, and with a little persuasion broke through the fibreglass to seperate the well from the transom. The well was freehanging i.e. not attached to the floor beams (stringers?) so when I make the new well I will extend it down to make it stronger, with a false bottom so water will still drain out.
After getting rid of the well, I had much better access to check out the transom.

Roadblock!

Arggh - a slipped disk in my back has slowed things down for a week or so. While I'm resting up, I've been reading up on boat construction and repair books. If you're keen to do a bit of reading up on the subject, check out this book  "Hartley's Guide to Boat Building" by Colin Brookes. It's got some great pictures and guides for building that translate well over to the repair side of things.

I've been giving thought to changing the design of the cockpit area, although very well set up for fishing, being completly open, there was nowhere for anyone to sit. I'm thinking of having two long bench seats running down each side, narrow enough to allow plenty of movement around the centre. I also plan on making a fitting to slot in a bait board that hangs over the side.

I have managed to have more of a look at the transom since my previous post, next up will be photo's and details of the stripdown of the rotten transom.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a picture of my cat who is guarding the boat till I am well enough to continue repairs :)

Part one - "tear 'er down"

Hi all.

The first step in rot repair is strip the boat out and see how bad the rot is. It's always much worse than what you can see.
I started by firstly taking out the squab seating and various bits and bobs that had been sitting in there for who knows how long (I found a still sealed in its wrapper fishing magazine dated mid 90's!)
There was a bit of moss growth in the topsides from sitting outside so long so I gave her a bit of a scrub down. Most of the stuff inside was junk, but I found the poles for the bimini cover in the cabin, along with a few bits and pieces that are obviously boat related so I have kept them in the garage for later reuse.

After a good clean out, I stripped out the cabin flooring and seating, and removed the deck. even though this might seem like a bit of work, I think it is important to know exactly what your dealing with, and this enables me to examine the hull and cabin all over.

Not good news though...

As you can see, the front lower corners of the cabin have a lot of rot in them. You can actually see where the water has entered in through the front screen and caused the rot. There is going to be a lot of work in making this right.

The bottom of the hull is still in great condition - no rot found yet - although the transom looks pretty rotten so I will be tearing it out and rebuilding, if it is as bad as I fear. NOTE: I know it looks really bad in the transom photo, all the black isn't rot though, just dirt etc :)

Up next will be a bit more of a dig into the rot in the transom to see how much is going to need replaced.

Catch you then!

Introduction

Hi everyone.

This is my blog on the repair of my 21ft plywood boat "Marama". I have rescued her from a life of slow decay rotting away under the trees at the family farm. She has a bit of rot in her and will need some extensive repair before being put back into service. I searched the internet for someone who had carried out similar work, but the web is dominated with fibreglass boat repairs. So I thought I would start a blog to document my rebuild of the Marama.

So follow along and see the trials and tribulations - and hopefully witness the phoenix rising from the ashes.

The first lot of pics I have are from when I first collected the Marama. The boat was free - my car however, overheated towing it home, resulting in a replacement motor :(